


Revival

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Doctor John, Doctor John Watson, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, John is a Very Good Doctor, Renewals, The Empty House, reawakenings, resuscitations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:58:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take my hand.</p>
<p>John Watson, conductor of breath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kiss of Life

 

_“Wake now it is time again”—W.S. Merwin_

 

Kiss of life is a misnomer. You can’t always breathe back the dead, John knows.

But you can try.

When he was five he cupped a mangled bird, English sparrow, whistled into its mandibles.

At ten he jogged the breath into a road-struck beagle, named him Glad.

In school,the first, her name was Joy.

In the desert another John, younger and bloody.

He’s been there.

The presence a sigh, no, a sighing over, water sluicing over stone. It takes, lightly or hard, seizes, with violence or reverence: his mother, his mates, almost Harry, choked blue on her own rage.

Take my hand. _Take my hand_. He’s got seduction, doesn’t he. You could be half in love with him.

Death, he means, who plucks kids from Bolton out of the Helmand and salmon-suited women off Brixton streets …

Or no, _life,_ he means, the stunned gasp, what Sherlock is.

*******

Sherlock, agonal, revival so sweet that when he’s gone you dream you’re death; if that’s the only way you get to catch him, hold him, lips-to-lungs say, _don’t be afraid._

_Of this deduction, of me.  
_

You take it.

*******

Steady a scenthound.

Bring back a bird.

Lift and stitch and give (you are, Sherlock said once,

a Conductor of Breath.)

_Take my hand._ He did.

Take my hand, it said, and have him back.

 

 


	2. The Flowers Were Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then he sits up out of the earth and says, tedious, the earth, tedious.

 

Morning and truth: he is alone.

He has the Work which is really just the work.

And London loves him less every hour, every year.

(Because I couldn’t keep you here.)

***

Outside the window stirrings and shouts and grindings and clankings.

Go to work. Lay on the hands.

Imagine the ways he might come back.

Like croci emerging behind iron gates.  Little fingers; little flames.

Sheep somewhere in the hills; not here.

Flurry of dusty bird-urchins with the waft of the nest on them--

And then he sits up out of the earth and says, _tedious, the earth, tedious._  

_The flowers were nice John but unnecessary._

Flurries falling into an empty grave.

***

Morning again.

He wakes up in his bed tangled in himself, in the things he never touched, wakes up in his white bed knowing oh, this is the century. The _twenty-first._ The one in which in some corners, if you try hard and are very brave you can sort of be yourself. The one to come back to, if he has a choice. The one in which, for the first time, but not for the last, they are together; blue blanket, window, breath, warm air and no rush, no rush; the amount of time it takes to get inside the frame that they are, that they have always been.

 


	3. Fireweed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s repair, John says to the air. There’s reaction.

_The fireweed is a compelling signal to get out and do something."—A. Hall_

 

Medicine, he wakes thinking.

There’s repair, John says to the air. There’s reaction.

Absence, the fever, has burnt a City–sized hole that he reaches through, grasps something that might be an organ, fixes it, stitches it, writes a scrip, warns and warms, puts it all back.

*******

The lab says it’s chemical.

It’s chemical.

It’s a reaction.

Salts violet and silver and blue.

You burst out onto a blast-field like fireweed, reagentless, a miracle.

Science.

That’s better.

Here we go. Come home.

*******

Fever is a surfactant, loosening him from himself, carrying away the traces. He's never been burnt, not really, not on the twin stakes of case and cocaine, not on notes or sex or tedium or oh, he is now.  
  
Burnt that is. Fever a catalyst, all the heart he never had.  
  
 _Sherlock_ , John says, as though he were here. He hadn’t realized there were so many ways to ignite a name. Or that they could all be set at once, the flames that fuse him into chryoprase, a bright melt with irides. Silicas agate cornelian onyx chlorite-included quartz ... _John._ Crystalline. Precise. Pulls him back through the sad salts pours him quick and toxic into himself like mercury.

Hotel, dubious lock, burnt bullet, spent bed.

Sleep, he wakes thinking, hot hands.

A tug. A reaction. The knot and flare of your breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Fireweed,Chamerion angustifolium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamerion_angustifolium)   
> [Fireweed, or Rosebay Willowherb, the county flower of London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_flowers_of_the_United_Kingdom)   
> [Rosebay Willowherb](http://www.cotswoldyear.com/2012/08/rose-bay-willow-herb-sets-seed.html)   
> [Pioneer species](http://www.pfaf.org/user/cmspage.aspx?pageid=92)   
> [Fireweed with photos](http://www.polartrec.com/expeditions/carbon-balance-in-warming-and-drying-tundra-2012/journals/2012-07-17)


	4. Magnesium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once washed blood from your hair standing outside the shower looking away both hands tangled in the strands.

 

Fuck it, he’s angry.

He’s been angry a long time and the chemistry is still here and the bow and the shoes and the dust and the knowledge.  

He opens the door.

_John_ , Sherlock says.

Pain, he can see right into it. Decipher it. Blinks and dashes, a flare, a dot.

Far too easy to act when the object of your anger can barely stand.

When the long and short of it is help.

*****

Fed you when you were hungry, clothed you.

Once washed blood from your hair standing outside the shower looking away both hands tangled in the strands, sluicing red down the drain. Broken fingers on both hands. You got out, dripping, hissing and stinging when I handed you a towel, stopped, _sorry_ , did the drying myself.

You’ll come back like that if you ever do, naked, beautiful, rinsed and reborn.

*****

Sherlock has a hand on each shoulder then, a soldier’s embrace, or brace anyway, though he’d never fall.

A warrior’s kiss, is it. He tastes metal and straw.

*****

“John,” Sherlock says, palming his jaw. “You’ve been out awhile.”

“Was I dreaming?”

“No,” Sherlock says. “Not exactly. You were …”

_Needing a blanket._

“Alright. Nightmare then.”

“Shh,” Sherlock says, “think about magnesium.”

John laughs then, short and soft.

_Think about magnesium._

He does, and it’s brilliant.


	5. Straight to the Clavicle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You laughed at the poetry, but you deserve it.

 

“I’m only here,” John says, clears his throat, “because Mrs. Hudson …”

“Said I was injured,” Sherlock says.

“Are you?”

“No.”

But there’s blood on his shirt, a fat streak of it. No color in his face.

*****

John’s debating dressings when Sherlock stops his hand.

“Every night.”

“What?” A careful tug, a swipe. Not good.

“I thought of,” Sherlock says, goes whiter, “your hands.”

Oh, god. You laughed at the poetry, but you deserve it.

Have some then:

_Burst out of your own chest like a bird from the eggshell of your ribs; stroll up the edges of galaxy drop into the Milky Way all white with stars, drop through the arches of the Vauxhall, home, take a cab of course, climb the stairs, fling open the door; reverse the roof; it never happened, this trick, this gravity, this tragedy; turn up, beaking the scenery and spitting it out clean; blow in, bang out the pronouncements, turn on your heel from the country of the dead._

“Bleeding’s slowed down,” John says.

Sherlock drops his drunken head on the arm, not of the sofa.

“Stay.”

“Well I’m not leaving you like this. You need…”

“I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

John follows the line of red straight to the clavicle, the sternum.

Sees a map he hadn’t, a ghost-tattoo.

_Come back._

 

 


	6. Come In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The body calls out to the clever brain to come in.

 

It’s noon somewhere and he hasn’t eaten since Thursday. No-one to remind him. He drinks tea;sugar, he thinks. Tastes bitterness instead.

*****

The steady thud of John’s pulse. _62\. 59. 55.100 (case)._ A funny arrhythmia he gets sometimes, can put a name to if pressed.

Sherlock can hear it, sharp-eared, from what seems a great distance. Blue-hill distance. He can almost hear it now.

*****

He heard John sob, just once, but nightmare or loss he couldn’t say. Stood in the corridor with his hand pressed flat to the door and felt something, death-watch ticking away at the third rib.

Later he dreamt he was crouched in the bend of an aorta, howling _no. You’re not going to bleed out, not now._

*****

Once in a cab he collapsed, lack of nourishment mostly and no surprise and John fed him something from his pocket, dried apricots maybe, something he’d never had before and certainly not since, bits of Mediterranean sun from rough sun-licked fingers. Necessity. Transport carrying transport carrying transport into the infinity of a London sunset.

*****

Heavy. He carries himself upstairs, sets the books down, reads the titles.

Imagine it.

Carry the books upstairs.

John says, _Sherlock put that down. Just put everything down._

Body calls out to clever brain to come in.

 _Oh,_ John says, takes the last book, undoes a top button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [Jude](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas/works), for John's "fast-beating heart"; came out slowing and Sherlock and I needed that.  
> [PFG](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/works), you said something about buttons?


	7. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Click and catch and settle.

 

There isn’t a chase because Sherlock leaves alone. Walking. Blocks north to an office with windows like portholes.

_Where’s your Watson?_ on repeat. (Donovan, a day ago; couldn’t delete) Step to it. Pavement. Brick. Forget.

The smell of damp, algae, aquarium overturned, sea washed up in a downtown hideout slipped into in the dusk. Carpet less than six months old walked on less than hour ago. Indoles. Organotins. Permethrin. Faint sex. Faint ash.

Crouch. Rip. Floor safe. (Round door underfloor, Britannia, safe house for idiots; just get them out, go, case closed.)

Not a key. Easy. Turn and click, right left right. Digits called up in the dark and the setting of teeth.

(A shadow at his elbow, laughing.)

His hands on papers and a fish-gasp behind.

A voice. A thump.  

A crack that says _stupid_.

*****

His name.

Point of light.

Quick pulse, not his.

Salt. Maybe sand.

“Sherlock are you…?”

“Cracked it,” he mutters. Might groan. “The safe.”

“Your head, more like. Chased the bastard off for you. I guess you ...”

“I don’t.” A breath, his. “Guess.”

“Of course you…”  A short bark and John’s hands on his face frame it.

“I’m alright.”

_So you’re back._

_Not dead._

_Where’s your …_

Warm exhale at his temple.

Right left right. Face to face.

Click and catch and settle.

“You’d better be.”


	8. Dig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes more than a keyboard to bring back the dead.

_"Between my finger and my thumb_

_The squat pen rests; snug as a gun"—Seamus Heaney, "Digging"_

 

 It takes more than a keyboard to bring back the dead.

It takes hands and mind and sacrifice and even that’s not enough.

Hello _,_ John says, time to come home. 

And somewhere, elsewhere, his wild-eyed partner says yes John, go.

Good night for a story.

*****

Alright.

_My ancestors dug coal in the lowlands; wished each other **oidhche mhath** in the dust, wore the danger, Watson, on their shoulders, and shed it, passed it, left me with a knack for turning things up. _

_My great-grandfather owned land, gathered stair-step, scared the rabbits up and the trespassers off, took the injured home to heal._

_My grandfather went to war._

_There were bullets._

_Trenches._

_And blood._

_There was you._

**_*_ **

Nope.

Scarlet about the ears with no.

You’re a romantic, John. And a soldier.

Fight for the words; your weapons, your balms.

*****

_My, you called me, my blogger._

_What if I built you a bed of all the things I called you, unsayable, true._

_“It has flourished beyond expectation,” the clan motto, well._

_Not until this._

_My grandmother was a poet. I’m not._

_But Under London is another._

_I went down with you and came up again, shining and new._

 

 

 

* * *

Sherlock leans in with both hands.

Reads and breathes in his ear, warm earth and oak.

"Ah, John."

"Someday I'll put it in the book."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oidhche mhath, Scottish Gaelic, good night
> 
> [Hylocomium splendens, Stair-step, or glittering wood moss](http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/sp_glit_woodmoss.htm)
> 
> “Between my finger and my thumb  
> The squat pen rests.  
> I’ll dig with it.”—Seamus Heaney, “Digging"


	9. I Stop Somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How did you become the only one.  
> Of what you are.

The amount of blood is surprising. He hears John's _shit, shit, shit_ and sees spray and thinks, _surprising._ How quickly it stops while his vision cants and John’s fingers coalesce, and that’s it, _coalesce_. What you've done John, brought me to this glutinous shining stop. The street’s whorls and he vomits into the gutter.

The seeping stops. John has him wrapped before the medics get there, holds him while the sky bleeds blue around the cloud.

Surprising. Not the efficiency but the full stop. That.  
  
 *****

Weather is surprising. He comes to himself stretched, looking out windows at clearing.

John’s face.

Blood on his striped shirt.

“Oh you’re … how d’you feel?”

Skip.

“I’m …”

“Sore, huh. You’re still a bastard, you know?”

John’s hands are on him then, and he stops.

*****

Scrapes still don't unsettle John, not a surprise. File under mild hurts: tea, plasters, extra notch of concern in the belt of brow. Brief directives.

_Keep that clean._

_Drink._

_For god's sake sleep._

_Are you…what?_

Unsettled a little then, but not much. Slow down. Look at the ceiling. Think how did it come to this one thing, just the one.

Worry a patch-corner ( _take that off)_ into facsimile of lines at John's eyes, the places where hurts have come to rest, have come to the end, one end, of what they’ll be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,  
> And filter and fibre your blood.  
> Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,  
> Missing me one place search another,  
> I stop somewhere waiting for you.”—Walt Whitman


	10. Perennial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plants and CPR.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For "writing after the heart stops", I thank [Jude.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas)

_Porphyrin. Chlorin. (haem and chlorophyll.)_

_Chloroplasts._

_=plastid,organelle._

_heterocyclic aromatic rings._

_Metalloproteins._

_Blood._

Done in Sherlock’s hand.

Red and green inks.

In Sherlock’s impossible hand.

*****

Here in the sunlight, windowboxed geranium.

He's OK, John is.

The writing doesn't go so well once the heart stops, he has it on authority.

But this is how they were saved. This how they saved themselves.

Sherlock came back. With the efficiency of blood, the visceral salt-copper of _meet me, meet me for some danger, maybe death._

It still lives. They live. To tell the story.

Foxglove and fireweed up through the cracks of London.

The vessels.

_Dear god is that how it is in your brain_ , Sherlock still says sometimes.

Forgetting that he's not all forgiven.

Thumping away at John’s ribs, creeping up and around and through until twined scarlet and green and bone and black. Ink and roots, plasma and leaves, water and …

Sap.

Is that how it is? _Yes._

You sat here and scribbled, switching, hands and pens, unfurling, twitching with life.

_Non-Newtonian fluid dynamics._

_Xylem. Phloem._

In your beautiful hand.

You circulate. You stop. You germinate. You bloom.

You press locked hands to your chest, six centimetres below the sternum, drop them hard.

Do as I do. Do it again. Do it again.

_Hemocyanin. Chlorophyll._

_Heart. Transport._

Keep bringing us back.

 

 

 


	11. Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's had so many chances he's weak with it.
> 
> Or, you know, piperidinic alkaloids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely [tea_for_lupin](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1013421) for the inspiration and gifts!

 

He's had so many chances he's weak with it. Well, he's not weak with anything but the aromatics. The evidence. Piperidinic alkaloids. The last thing he remembers. Before it was moonless and he was gone.

 _If you_ , John said.

_If you what._

_(If you want to live.)_

_Come with me._  
  
 *****

"Drink this,” John says, tips the cup,"I won't let you die."

The kitchen is very bright of a sudden.

His eyes are boltholes into which John peers.

Looks for the old enemy.  
  
 *****

“Drink this,” Sherlock says back.

It feels like 1899.

Fumes. The poisons of the nineteenth flowing to the twentieth. _Conium maculatum._ Conine, nicotine, curare. Benzene.

“Central,” he says, “nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. “

“Just,” John says, looks ceilingward, “don’t get up yet.”

*****

He’s marked months on the calendar, calculated a never-exit. a never-say, but he says it anyway.

“John.”

“Yes.”

“John.”

“What is it ( _I haven’t got all night to fan fumes out of the kitchen and sit while you shake and blink and vomit until the (oh god) passes. You haven’t changed at all, have you),_ Sherlock? _”_

“I.”

How hard a mouth works, around these approximants.

John’s fingers catch his collarbone.

“Of course you do.”

“Now drink this.”

*****

Car horns. Umbels and rings.

Old time pouring through their windows.

When elsewhere they drank it together and bloomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=Conium+maculatum&guide=North_American_Invasives&flags=HAS:)


	12. Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Put the day in the grate, light it.

 

Dawn and work. John rubs sand from the corners and comes down to Sherlock hunched on the sofa in jacket and pyjamas, one arm curled across. Ribs like bellows.

“Right,” John says, takes Sherlock’s arm from him. Bones and heat, kindling.

“Right,” John says. Fingers to eyebrows. A grimace.

“Sherlock.”

Not much of a reply.

“How long have you been sitting there?”

“Since…” A gulp of flint. A spark.

“Right.”

John fetches his kit, pushes the jacket off, pushes Sherlock back on the cushions, listens, presses, shakes his head.

Pulls up a blanket.

Puts the day in the grate, lights it.

*****

Sherlock goes up. Consumed quickly. John can hear him crackling. Brings water and a plum, cut up. Douses.

Sit up, take this.

Here.

*****

Last case they pounded through oilslick in puddles.

The sweet pine of gas, an explosion.

Mycroft’s ire, incoming.

A slash of soot.

A moderate bleed.

“John!”

Sherlock, gasping, face a hot wire, tugging him clear.

_This is what makes you live._

The smile’s alive.

_It is._

*****

Midnight, sleeves rolled up. Tissues, a pyre of them. A bin, bottle caps, a syrup-spill.

“John?”

“Yeah?”

Set down a book, touch a cheek, look at the wreck in the bed.

“Bored?” A wet cough.

“Nope.”

His hand, fond, rests on Sherlock’s ribs.

No fire in here, no blood.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new--winter, year, Sherlock!


End file.
